Staten Island hardest hit by cultural cuts

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly stated that the Ten Penny Players received no funding this year. A graphic included with the story correctly revealed they received $4,800 from the Department of Cultural Affairs. For clarification, The Richmond Dance Ensemble received funding under its current name, St. George Theater Restoration. Also, City Council members can and do fund cultural organizations with their individual member items.

Cultural groups large and small across Staten Island are being slammed three times harder than those in the rest of the city by a wave of budget cuts that could ultimately close some of their doors.
While City Hall belt-tightening is squeezing everything from museums to dance troupes across the city, the impact on Island groups has been so severe that this year the cries of the Forgotten Borough are growing from shore the shore.

A cut of $856,606, or 32.07 percent, for the recently-merged Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden is just one example
An Advance analysis of Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) figures for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 revealed that the city slashed funding to all of the borough's cultural groups -- including those that have been awarded permanent funding -- by more than 20 percent, or more than three times the 6.5 percent citywide average.
Some groups on the Island were hit harder than others.
The Staten Island Children's Museum and the Tibetan Museum will average 25 percent less than they got from the DCA last year.
The Noble Maritime Collection in Snug Harbor Cultural Center had its funds slashed by 86 percent.
And although a new funding system by the DCA was supposed to distribute money more fairly, the city still spends more than nine times as much to fund cultural groups in Manhattan than in any other borough. Staten Island, with about 6 percent of the population, gets only about 2.3 percent of the city's art funds.
The city's penny-pinching only compounds what will undoubtedly be some lean years ahead for cultural groups, which have also seen private donations start to shrink and have little if any marketing dollars to draw tourists.
Erin Urban, the Noble Collection's founding director, said she doesn't know how her organization is going to stay afloat.
"This is really devastating. How can they suddenly decide that we only deserve less than a quarter of what we used to get?" Ms. Urban said.
John Caltabiano, director of the Staten Island Zoo, said he's spent "sleepless nights" trying to figure out how to make ends meet with $225,000 less than last year.
Even though groups like the Zoo are guaranteed lines in the city budget, the amount they get varies every year -- usually based on how well they lobby city officials. Last year, the DCA introduced "CultureStat," a computer-based system designed to objectively evaluate those groups, and said subsequent rewards would be based in part on the scores they received in those
The Island's City Council delegation expressed surprise at the disparity in the figures. All three said they are not in favor of the new cultural funding process because it took them out of the equation, and they noted that Island groups rely on government funding much more than their counterparts in other districts.
"It's an inherent uphill battle we face when it comes to funding on any level of government. Put on top of that, this new convoluted funding system nets us less," Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island) said.
Michael McMahon (D-North Shore) said the system does not work because it "over-emphasizes culture-elitism, and de-emphasizes the benefits of local groups."
"This process wasn't intended to hurt Staten Island, but in the end it does," he said.
When Vincent Ignizio (R-South Shore) was chief of staff to former South Shore Councilman Stephen Fiala, the Island delegation doled out funds to groups based on needs. They had few complaints.
Reducing the inequities of cultural funding to a "borough vs. borough fight" would be oversimplifying the issue, according to Norma Munn, chairwoman and co-founder of the New York City Arts Coalition, who has been following the arts budget for decades.
The city distributes more money to cultural organizations in Manhattan because far more groups apply for funding there than anywhere else in the city -- about 600 groups in Manhattan applied for program funding in 2009, she estimated. Manhattan arts events and museums also have much higher attendance than those in other boroughs, which is one of the metrics the funding panel uses to decide where best to spend the money.
Ms. Munn believes the new system is more equitable because it is based on merit and helps smaller groups grow, rather than simply giving money to the same groups every year. A survey conducted by her organization supports that assertion: 68 percent of the cultural groups questioned said they were very satisfied or mostly satisfied with the new funding procedures.
Ms. Munn doesn't feel the same way about the way the 34 Cultural Institution Groups -- better known as "CIGs" -- are funded. She said the city doesn't seem to recognize how communities have changed, and how some organizations have grown to meet those communities' needs. The creation of CIGs, in fact, is based on an old political deal in which the city agreed to pay the salaries of the city employees that work for them, and to subsidize the cost of maintaining the city buildings, she said. None of the money was ever intended for programming.
"The funding doesn't deal with the new realities in arts," Ms. Munn added.
McMahon goes even further. He proposes the city create a "Second-Tier CIG" group that would help organizations like the Noble Collection maintain some financial stability.
Some of those familiar with the new funding process said the Noble Collection illustrates how it may be skewed.
CIGs, which traditionally get about 80 percent of the DCA budget, include the older Manhattan institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and some from the outer boroughs, like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Staten Island Historical Society, which runs Historic Richmond Town.
Under the new rules, City Council members can no longer fund their districts' cultural groups through member items, either.
Instead, all the non-CIGs vie for the remaining funds, called Cultural Development Funds (CDF). Cultural Affairs advisory panels, usually comprised of notable artists, organization heads and City Council and borough president staffers, award these funds.
Cultural groups with annual budgets under $250,000 submit applications to borough specific panels. Groups with budgets over $250,000 -- which account for about 80 percent of those that receive city funding -- have to compete for money doled out by a citywide panel.
Urban, whose group falls into the latter category, believes the process is unfair because few, if any, Staten Islanders sit on the citywide panels. The citywide panel failed to recognize that the Noble Collection museum is actually housed in a city-owned property, and the $33,000 she was awarded this fiscal year won't even be enough to maintain that building.
Agency spokeswoman Kate deRosset said the reductions were spread evenly across all CIGs. She explained that some figures -- like the more than $850,000 cut from the Snug Harbor funding -- appear larger than they actually are because these groups received one-time payments for special projects last year.
The CDF were dispersed to the groups "in the fairest manner possible," she added.
Jonathan Peters, a finance professor at the College of Staten Island who has also studied the city's fiscal inequities in transportation funding, disagrees with that statement. He compiled the entire individual CDF awards in each borough from fiscal year 2008. What he found were "startling" disparities in terms of per capita spending. According to his calculations, the city spends $15 for cultural programs for every resident in Manhattan, compared to anywhere from $1.30-$1.72 for every resident of the outer boroughs. That does not include the money spent on CIGs, the bigger institutions.